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Several elements contribute to what makes a horror movie genuinely terrifying. Whether it involves a homicidal maniac with an axe, rampaging animals, or extraterrestrial invaders, a standout horror film ultimately needs to accomplish just one thing: instill fear in the audience.
However, many horror movies flop at achieving this fundamental goal, often disastrously so. Earnest attempts to terrify the audience sometimes crumble due to constraints like inadequate funding, poor execution, or downright absurd concepts. Interestingly, some people find badly executed horror films as intriguing as the successful ones. This subjective perspective turns one person’s disaster into another’s beloved cult favorite, ensuring even the most critically panned horror flicks remain worth revisiting.
Armed with a flashlight, we ventured into the deepest, most shadowy parts of the horror landscape, unearthing a notorious collection of low-quality remakes, subpar creatures, and a particularly outrageous performance by Nicolas Cage. Here are the 15 most atrocious horror films ever created — proceed at your own risk.
15. Plan 9 from Outer Space
The crowning achievement of exploitation “auteur” Edward D. Wood Jr’s dubious career, 1957’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is a delirious disasterpiece of cosmic proportions. Aliens in model kit UFOs descend on Earth to resurrect the dead, in hopes of stopping mankind from unleashing a doomsday machine. Featuring fake television psychic Criswell, a vamping graveyard ghoul (the aptly-named Vampira), and “Dracula” actor Bela Lugosi in what was billed as his final performance (actually, recycled footage from another scrapped film project), “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is stunning in its ineptitude.
Named “The Worst Film Ever Made” in Harry and Michael Medved’s influential 1980 book “The Golden Turkey Awards,” the film’s production was chronicled in Tim Burton’s Academy Award-winning 1994 biopic “Ed Wood,” further solidifying its modern reputation as a camp classic. “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is a gift from the B-movie gods.
- Cast: Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson
- Director: Edward D. Wood Jr.
- Rating: Not rated
- Runtime: 79 minutes
- Where to Watch: Mubi, Plex, The Roku Channel
14. The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
Ray Dennis Steckler, the far from acclaimed director of mid-century schlock like “Rat Pfink a Boo Boo” and “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monster,” made his magnum opus in 1964 with “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.” If that title wasn’t enough of a mouthful, the poster promises (or, more accurately, threatens) that this film is “The First Monster Musical”!
At a seaside carnival, the fortune teller Madame Estrella (Brett O’Hara) hypnotizes and disfigures her patrons, keeping them captive as her zombie “pets.” An aimless slacker named Jerry (Steckler, acting under the name “Cash Flagg”) becomes her latest victim, slashing and strangling his way through the carnival. There’s the monster, but as for the music? The film is padded out with full-length folk songs and dance routines from local nightclub acts, grinding the killer zombie action to a halt. “The Incredibly Strange Creatures…” does have a garish, hallucinatory quality to it, however, that almost makes it worthy of its tongue-twisting title.
13. The Wicker Man (2006)
The 1973 film “The Wicker Man” is a critically-acclaimed folk horror fable about faith, tradition, and sacrifice that culminates in a chilling confrontation between Christianity and paganism. The 2006 remake of “The Wicker Man” is about absolutely none of those things.
Nicolas Cage plays Edward Malus, a traumatized police officer summoned to a neo-pagan island community by his ex-fiancée (Kate Beahan), who claims her daughter Rowan (Erika Shaye Gair) is missing. Edward soon suspects that Sister Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn) plans to sacrifice Rowan as part of a fertility ritual. What follows is a deranged spectacle of bizarre set pieces (such as Edward running around the island in a bear suit), violent misogynist overtones, and nuclear levels of overacting by Cage that inspired legions of memes instead of screams.
- Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan
- Director: Neil LaBute
- Runtime: 102 minutes
- Rating: PG-13
- Where to Watch: Apple TV, Prime Video
12. Night of the Lepus
On paper, a giant monster movie exploring man’s impact on the environment — starring “Psycho” scream queen Janet Leigh — sounds like a fun time at the movies. But that depends on the monster. “King Kong” has a giant ape and “Them!” has oversized radioactive ants, but the beasts in “Night of the Lepus?” A horde of cute, colossal, man-killing rabbits.
In this Arizona-set, 1972 sci-fi snoozefest, Leigh plays Gerry Bennett, a scientist working on a serum to disrupt the breeding cycle of rabbits after their population threatens to overwhelm the area. Gerry’s young daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton) frees one of the test subjects, which then spawns a legion of giant, mutated rabbits that crush everything in their path.
It is difficult to imagine any film could make footage of fluffy bunnies frolicking on model sets look terrifying, but what really dooms “Night of the Lepus” is its lack of conviction. Both the title (“lepus” is Latin for “hare”) and the poster obfuscate the creatures in this feature, suggesting that not even the people who made this movie knew how to sell it.
- Cast: Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun
- Director: William F. Claxton
- Rating: PG
- Runtime: 88 minutes
- Where to Watch: Plex, Prime Video
11. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Since the inaugural installment of the “Friday the 13th” franchise, slasher movie superstar Jason Voorhees had been drowned, stabbed, hung, hacked to bits by his own machete, and struck by lightning. By the time the eighth movie rolled around in 1989, he needed a change of scenery to prove there was still life in the old boy.
Unfortunately, “Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan” was dead on arrival. Though the title promised to take Jason (Kane Hodder) out of Camp Crystal Lake and into the wild streets of New York City, most of the movie actually takes place on a boat, with Jason stalking and stabbing the obligatory group of horny teenagers. By the time Jason actually makes it to Manhattan — comically depicted as an apocalyptic hellscape overflowing with street punks and toxic waste — it’s too late to care. As movie critic Betsy Sherman wrote, “The film should have been called ‘Jason Takes a Cruise.'”
- Cast: Jensen Daggett, Sharlene Martin, Scott Reeves
- Director: Rob Hedden
- Rating: R
- Runtime: 100 minutes
- Where to Watch: Apple TV, Prime Video
10. Maximum Overdrive
Bestselling novelist Stephen King may be the master of the macabre, but 1986’s “Maximum Overdrive” proved he is not the master of moviemaking. King’s sole directorial effort, “Maximum Overdrive” was based on his short story “Trucks” and depicts a world where machines — from electric knives and lawn mowers to big rig trucks — gain sentience and turn against mankind.
“Maximum Overdrive” follows an unlucky huddle of humans (including Emilio Estevez and Lisa Simpson herself, Yeardley Smith) at a truck stop as they are tormented by a convoy of evil 18-wheelers. As scary as a giant killer truck may seem, “Maximum Overdrive” immediately ruins it by putting a goofy mask of the Marvel comic book character the Green Goblin on the main rig’s grille. King admitted to having substance abuse struggles during filming, and later dismissed the project to the Gainesville Sun as a “moron movie.” Despite a heavy metal soundtrack from AC/DC, “Maximum Overdrive” is as fun as a flat tire.
9. Hobgoblins
Joe Dante’s 1984 horror-comedy hit “Gremlins” spawned a pack of furry little cinematic knockoffs, including “Critters,” “Ghoulies,” and “Munchies,” but its most cursed offspring is “Hobgoblins.” In this sleazy slice of ’80s cheese, the Hobgoblins are aliens who trap their victims in their deepest fantasies before killing them.
When security guard Kevin (Tom Bartlett) accidentally releases the Hobgoblins from their (suspiciously unlocked) vault, they go on a rampage through town, culminating in an explosive performance at the appropriately-named Club Scum. The characters are repulsive, the jokes horrendous, and the scares nonexistent, but worst of all? The Hobgoblins themselves are just creepy little hand puppets. 1988’s “Hobgoblins” gained notoriety after it was featured on an episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” and in 2009, director Rick Sloane released “Hobgoblins 2” on an unsuspecting world.
- Cast: Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, Steven Boggs
- Director: Rick Sloane
- Rating: Not rated
- Runtime: 92 minutes
- Where to Watch: Plex, The Roku Channel
8. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Nothing can prepare you for “Birdemic: Shock and Terror,” director James Nguyen’s blood-curdling homage to Alfred Hitchcock and … Al Gore? “The Birds” re-imagined in the age of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film begins as an innocent, if incredibly stilted, romance between software salesman Rod (Alan Bagh) and Victoria’s Secret model Nathalie (Whitney Moore). But all hell breaks loose when flocks of birds — mutated and angry thanks to climate change — begin brutally attacking every human in sight.
This painfully low-budget film suffers in every aspect, from the script full of silly non-sequiturs to the bad sound quality and the redwood-stiff acting from the inexperienced leads. But no one who has seen 2010’s “Birdemic” has ever forgotten the appallingly bad CGI birds, who awkwardly flap and hover above the flailing actors like clip art samples gone berserk.
- Cast: Alan Bagh, Whitney Moore, Janae Caster
- Director: James Nguyen
- Rating: Not rated
- Runtime: 93 minutes
- Where to Watch: Pluto TV, Plex, Prime Video
7. Troll 2
No list of the worst horror movies ever made would be complete without the atrocious “Troll 2.” How bad is it? To start, there isn’t a single troll in the movie. The 1990 in-name-only sequel to 1986’s “Troll,” the film follows the Waits family as they move to the town of Nilbog (spell it backwards). The goblins of Nilbog plan to eat the unsuspecting family, but being vegetarians, they need to trick humans into eating their cursed food so that they can be transformed into plants and then eaten. (Got that?)
Only young Joshua (Michael Stephenson) knows the truth and, aided by the Molotov cocktail-wielding ghost of his grandfather, sets out to save his family. “Troll 2” is a ghastly, green fever dream of a film, featuring awful makeup, ear splittingly-bad dialogue, and some of the most grotesque eating scenes ever captured on film. Stephenson would later direct 2009’s “Best Worst Movie,” a documentary about the making of “Troll 2” and its unexpected afterlife as a midnight cult favorite.
- Cast: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey
- Director: Claudio Fragasso
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 95 minutes
- Where to Watch: Kanopy, Prime Video
6. One Missed Call
The nadir of the J-horror remake boom of the 2000s, “One Missed Call” is a watered-down, incoherent muddle that would feel derivative even if it wasn’t directly adapted from a 2003 film by prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike.
What the horror classic “The Ring” did for videotapes, the 2008 feature “One Missed Call” tries, and fails, to do with cell phones. A group of bland twenty-somethings, led by Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon), begin receiving mysterious phone calls from themselves in the future, saying their last words before their violent deaths. What follows is a mishmash of horror cliches including evil children, bad CGI ghosts, and an exorcism gone wrong. “One Missed Call” should be missed at all costs.
- Cast: Shannyn Sossamon, Edward Burns, Ray Wise
- Director: Eric Valette
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 87 minutes
- Where to Watch: Hoopla, Prime Video
5. House of the Dead
Looking to party on a mysterious island, a group of bickering, oversexed coeds bribe a gun-running boat captain to transport them, despite the warnings of the superstitious first mate, Salish (legendary “that guy” actor Clint Howard). They arrive at the rave, only to be attacked by hordes of flesh-eating zombies. Fleeing into an abandoned house, the coeds meet another group of would-be partiers and learn that the island was once home to a disgraced Spanish priest who sought immortality. Can they survive the “House of the Dead”?
One of the most reviled video game adaptations ever made, “House of the Dead” somehow has less of a plot than the first-person shooter arcade game that inspired it. Directed by the infamous, Razzie Award-winning Uwe Boll, the 2003 film’s attempts at R-rated excess — exploding heads, gratuitous nudity, spliced-in footage from the actual video game — are crude, inept, and far from scary. “House of the Dead” is a disorienting, incoherent mess that will leave the viewer shambling around like one of the zombies in the film.
- Cast: Jonathan Cherry, Tyron Leitso, Clint Howard
- Director: Uwe Boll
- Rating: R
- Runtime: 90 minutes
- Where to Watch: Plex, Prime Video
4. Jaws: The Revenge
“Jaws: The Revenge” holds a special place of dishonor in the bad movie Hall of Shame. “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg’s 1975 man vs. shark thriller, has frightened audiences for 50 years and is considered one of the best movies of all time. But if it was improbable that the Brody family would encounter sharks again in “Jaws 2,” it was incredible in “Jaws 3” and downright ridiculous by the time “Jaws: The Revenge” swam into theaters in 1987.
The widowed Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary, the only returning cast member from “Jaws”) flies to the Bahamas to recuperate after her youngest son is killed by a great white shark. Traumatized by her loss, Ellen now believes that sharks are attacking her family to avenge the killer sharks that they slew in the previous films. This turns out to be exactly what is happening. The unexplained, almost supernatural connection between woman and shark — and the idea that sharks even understand the concept of revenge — is only slightly sillier than the romance between Ellen and seaplane pilot Michael Caine.
- Cast: Lorraine Gary, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Caine
- Director: Joseph Sargent
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 89 minutes
- Where to Watch: Apple TV, Prime Video
3. The Devil Inside
An unholy union between a demonic possession movie and a “found footage” faux-documentary, the 2012 release “The Devil Inside” also boasts one of the worst endings in film history. Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) is making a film about her mother, who committed multiple murders during an exorcism. Unfortunately for Isabella, her mother isn’t possessed by one demon, but four – and they’re out to possess Isabella and everyone she knows.
And that ending? Isabella’s friends take her away for an exorcism, but the car crashes and the screen goes black. “The Devil Inside” then concludes with a title card saying, “The facts surrounding the Rossi Case remain unresolved,” with a link to a website containing more information. The sudden, unresolved ending was booed by audiences and condemned by critics as a cheap marketing stunt — and as of this writing, the tie-in website is no longer online.
- Cast: Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth
- Director: William Brent Bell
- Rating: R
- Runtime: 83 minutes
- Where to Watch: Apple TV, Prime Video
2. Blood Freak
Some bad movies are turkeys, but only “Blood Freak” turns a man into a bloodthirsty turkey-headed monster thanks to some mutated meat. The motorcycle-riding Vietnam vet Herschell (Steve Hawkes) makes a fateful encounter with two Florida sisters: saintly Angel (Heather Hughes) wants to help Herschell get back on his feet, while sinful Anne (Dana Cullivan) wants to seduce him with sex and marijuana.
Reefer madness takes hold, and Herschell gets a job at a local turkey farm. Unscrupulous scientists bribe Herschell into eating experimental, chemically-treated turkey meat, which transforms him into the “blood freak” of the title. Now sporting an enormous turkey head, Herschell is compelled to mutilate and kill other drug users so that he can drink their blood (not easy, with that beak).
Nothing can stop Herschell’s killing spree, except possibly the power of … prayer? Yes, 1972’s “Blood Freak” is the world’s only turkey-themed anti-drug religious horror film, and if the didactic dialogue isn’t enough to drive the point home, co-director Brad F. Grinter repeatedly stops the film to chain-smoke in a wood-paneled room and lecture the audience. “Blood Freak” is one bad trip of a movie.
- Cast: Steve Hawkes, Dana Cullivan, Heather Hughes
- Director: Brad F. Grinter and Steve Hawkes
- Rating: Not rated
- Runtime: 86 minutes
- Where to Watch: Plex
1. Manos: The Hands of Fate
Emerson Film Enterprises
Directed in 1966 by El Paso, Texas fertilizer salesman Harold P. Warren, who wanted to prove that anyone could make a movie, everything about “Manos: The Hands of Fate” defies belief. A family takes a wrong turn while on vacation, falling into the nightmarish hands of satyr housekeeper Torgo (John Reynolds) and his mustachioed Master (Tom Neyman), who leads a cult dedicated to the god Manos. (“Manos” translates to “hands” in Spanish, making the full title “Hands: The Hands of Fate.”)
That simple summary fails to convey the full experience of watching “Manos,” which functions like a cinematic endurance test for even the most jaded bad movie fan. Warren’s inexperience as a director (and star — he plays the family patriarch) shines through in every badly shot frame. Clumsily edited and poorly dubbed, the finished film — which includes a catfight among the Master’s diaphanously gowned wives, and an extended driving sequence where the absent opening credits should have been — is a hypnotic and haunting failure.
“Manos” was virtually unknown before being featured on “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in what is now considered the series’ best episode. The film has gone on to inspire sequels, a video game, and multiple stage productions (including the puppet musical “Manos: The Hands of Felt”) proving that “Manos: The Hands of Fate” is the best of the absolute worst.
